Santo T, Clark B, Hickman M, et al. - Findings suggest essentiality of increasing access to opioid agonist treatment (OAT) and retention in treatment for lowering rates of preventable mortality among people with opioid dependence.

• The Embase, MEDLINE, and PsycINFO databases yielded 15 RCTs including 3,852 participants and 36 primary cohort studies including 749,634 participants for inclusion in analysis.

• This systematic review and meta-analysis revealed that during OAT, people with opioid dependence show significantly lower risk of all-cause, overdose, suicide, alcohol-related, cancer, and cardiovascular-related mortality.